Tournament: UGA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart TS | Judge: Andrew Hart

1NC — Apocalyptic Thinking Critique

First, the affirmative’s dramatization of impacts as existential risks replaces risk assessment with worst-case thinking.

Furedi 10 — Frank Furedi, Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, holds a Ph.D. from the School of Oriental and African Studies at London University, 2010 ("Fear is key to irresponsibility," The Australian, October 9^th, Available Online at http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/fear-is-key-to-irresponsibility/story-e6frg6zo-1225935797740, Accessed 10-18-2010)
In the 21st century the optimistic belief in humanity’s potential for subduing the unknown and to become master of its fate has given way to the belief that we are too powerless to deal with the perils confronting us.
We live in an era where problems associated with uncertainty and risk are amplified and, through our imagination, mutate swiftly into existential threats. Consequently, it is rare that unexpected natural events are treated as just that.
Rather, they are swiftly dramatised and transformed into a threat to human survival. The clearest expression of this tendency is the dramatisation of weather forecasting.
Once upon a time the television weather forecasts were those boring moments when you got up to get a snack. But with the invention of concepts such as "extreme weather", routine events such as storms, smog or unexpected snowfalls have acquired compelling entertainment qualities.
This is a world where a relatively ordinary, technical, information-technology problem such as the so-called millennium bug was interpreted as a threat of apocalyptic proportions, and where a flu epidemic takes on the dramatic weight of the plot of a Hollywood disaster movie.
Recently, when the World Health Organisation warned that the human species was threatened by the swine flu, it became evident that it was cultural prejudice rather than sober risk assessment that influenced much of present-day official thinking.
In recent times European culture has become confused about the meaning of uncertainty and risk. Contemporary Western cultural attitudes towards uncertainty, chance and risk are far more pessimistic and confused than they were through most of the modern era. Only rarely is uncertainty perceived as an opportunity to take responsibility for our destiny. Invariably uncertainty is represented as a marker for danger and change is often regarded with dread.
Frequently, worst-case thinking displaces any genuine risk-assessment process. Risk assessment is based on an attempt to calculate the probability of different outcomes. Worst-case thinking—these days known as precautionary thinking—is based on an act of imagination. It imagines the worst-case scenario and demands that we take action on that basis.

Second, this causes serial policy failure — acting based on worst-case possibilities ruins decision-making.

Evans 12 — Dylan Evans, Lecturer in Behavioral Science at University College Cork School of Medicine, holds a Ph.D. in Philosophy from the London School of Economics, 2012 ("Nightmare Scenario: The Fallacy of Worst-Case Thinking," Risk Management, April 2^nd, Available Online at http://www.rmmagazine.com/2012/04/02/nightmare-scenario-the-fallacy-of-worst-case-thinking/, Accessed 10-10-2013)
There’s something mesmerizing about apocalyptic scenarios. Like an alluring femme fatale, they exert an uncanny pull on the imagination. That is why what security expert Bruce Schneier calls "worst-case thinking" is so dangerous. It substitutes imagination for thinking, speculation for risk analysis and fear for reason.
One of the clearest examples of worst-case thinking was the so-called "1 doctrine," which Dick Cheney is said to have advocated while he was vice president in the George W. Bush administration. According to journalist Ron Suskind, Cheney first proposed the doctrine at a meeting with CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice in November 2001.
Responding to the thought that Al Qaeda might want to acquire a nuclear weapon, Cheney apparently remarked: "If there’s a 1 chance that Pakistani scientists are helping Al Qaeda build or develop a nuclear weapon, we have to treat it as a certainty in terms of our response. It’s not about our analysis…It’s about our response."
By transforming low-probability events into complete certainties whenever the events are particularly scary
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the extreme but improbable risks and does a poor job at assessing outcomes."

Third, this is the most important impact — training students to make good decisions is debate’s fundamental purpose.

Strait and Wallace 8 — L. Paul Strait, Ph.D. Candidate in Communication at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, and Brett Wallace, M.A. Candidate in Security Policy Studies at George Washington University, 2008 ("Academic Debate as a Decision-Making Game: Inculcating The Virtue of Practical Wisdom," Contemporary Argumentation and Debate, Volume 29, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via EBSCOhost Communication 26 Mass Media Complete, p. 3-6)
Practical Wisdom
Since the inception of modern academic debate, much of the praise it has received
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the highest government officials to the most inconsequential members of society, uses.
Aristotle (c. 330BCE/1941a) argues that this decision-making process combines desire and reasoning in the act of deliberation focused on some end. The ability to make good decisions (and to follow through with them) is associated with the virtue of practical wisdom: ~end page 3~
Practical wisdom... is concerned with things human and things about which it is possible
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, and practice is concerned with particulars. (~231141b 6-16).
This underlies our contention that practical wisdom is the final cause of debate. Practical wisdom is broad, provides coherence and unity in a non-arbitrary way, and is value-neutral with respect to the growing divide between the policy-focused and the critically-inclined. Non-practical ends are not helpful – as Aristotle (c. 330BCE/1941a) argues:
The origin of action—its efficient, not its final cause—is choice, and that of choice is desire and reasoning with a view to an end... Intellect itself, however, moves nothing, but only the intellect which aims at an end and is practical; for this rules the productive intellect as well, since everyone who makes makes for an end, and that which is made is not an end in the unqualified sense. (~231139a32 – 37).
Practical ends that are not unqualified—e.g., Mitchell’s (1995)
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highest quality of skills, while at the same time preserving competitive equity.
The ability to make decisions deriving from deliberation, argumentation or debate, is that
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is considered the appropriate decision-maker(s) must be identified:
The appropriate decision makers are those necessary to the ultimate implementation of the decision. You may win adherence of fellow students to the proposition that the midterm exam should count less than the final paper in grading your class, but if the professor says no, little is gained... It is important ~end page 5~ for... ~arguers~ to recognize who the appropriate decision makers are. (Rieke 26 Sillars, 1993, p. 2).
Since policy debate aims at determining whether a particular course of action is expedient all arguments which misapprehend the appropriate decision maker(s) are red herrings and interfere with true rational deliberation.
Academics from outside the contest debate community make this argument in different ways in discussing
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success, and preparation for college and employment" (p. 49).

Finally, hyperbolic extinction impacts should be rejected. The alternative is to vote against the affirmative because their 1AC has made effective decision-making impossible.

Gross and Gilles 12 — Mathew Barrett Gross, New Media Strategist who served as the Director of Internet Communications for Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign, and Mel Gilles, Director of Sol Kula Yoga and Healing, 2012 ("How Apocalyptic Thinking Prevents Us from Taking Political Action," The Atlantic, April 23^rd, Available Online at http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/04/how-apocalyptic-thinking-prevents-us-from-taking-political-action/255758/, Accessed 10-10-2013)
Flip through the cable channels for long enough, and you’ll inevitably find the apocalypse
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Nile virus, are the looming specter of apocalypse darkening our nation’s horizon.
How to make sense of it all? After all, not every scenario can
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rapid reversal of the world’s magnetic poles might seem terrifyingly likely and imminent.
The last time apocalyptic anxiety spilled into the mainstream to the extent that it altered the course of history — during the Reformation — it relied on a revolutionary new communications technology: the printing press. In a similar way, could the current surge in apocalyptic anxiety be attributed in part to our own revolution in communications technology?
The media, of course, have long mastered the formula of packaging remote possibilities
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. "They don’t teach that in Sunday school, but it’s true."
Nothing inspires fear like the end of the world, and ever since Y2K,
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an Arab terrorist poisoning that drinking supply, resulting in millions of casualties?
Yet not all of the crises or potential threats before us are equal, nor are they equally probable – a fact that gets glossed over when the media equate the remote threat of a possible event, like epidemics, with real trends like global warming.
Over the last decade, the 24-hour news cycle and the proliferation of
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flu, or swine flu also never lived up to their media hype.
This over-reliance on the apocalyptic narrative causes us to fear the wrong things
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the likely impact of the worst-case model of any given threat?

Tournament: UGA | Round: 5 | Opponent: Alpharetta RS | Judge: Scott Brown

Cuba Agriculture DA

Lifting the embargo decimates Cuba sustainable agriculture

Asquith and Fairweather 10 — ~Christina Asquith, contributor to Solutions magazine, Jack Fairweather, won the British equivalent of the Pulitzer prize for his reporting, 2010 ("How Can Cuba’s Sustainable Agriculture Survive the Peace?," Solution, February, Volume I, Issue II, Page 56-58, Available online at http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/554-http://www.thesolutionsjournal.com/node/554, Accessed on January 28, 2014)~
For a country that responded to severe energy crisis by switching to organic, localized agriculture, the fruits of the revolution must be protected from the coming peace.
For those trying to imagine life without oil, Cuba has proven the solitary example of a country successfully de-industrializing.
Confronted with the collapse of aid from the Soviet Union and ever-tighter U.S. sanctions in the early 1990s, the Castro regime was forced to scupper its centrally-planned, fossil-fuel-driven agriculture and rediscover sustainable and green farming practices.
The solutions developed by a young generation of farmers and agronomists – including urban farms in vacant lots in the capital, Havana, and a network of producers across the country – now provide 80 of the country with predominantly local, organic produce and helped turn Cuba into an unintentional leader of the green movement.
And yet, scarcely has this revolution been achieved, but it is under threat — not from the imperial machination of America (a popular theme in Communist circles) but from the promise of Cuba’s re-integration into the world economy, raised by President Barack Obama at the recent Summit of the Americas.
The problem, say the leaders of Cuba’s green movement, is that opening up trade will flood the country with cheap oil and with it a return to an industrialized food supply. Recent subsidized oil imports from Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez have led to an increase in the use of fertilizers.
"Industrialized food production in Cuba means centralized planning and control. The government never wanted to give up control, and now with more oil, we may see the independence that localized, sustainable agriculture produces being undermined," said Fernando Funes Monzote, a leading agronomist at the Indio Hatuey Experimental Station, University of Matanzas.
The solution, says Monzote, is for the government to develop a strategy that enshrines sustainability at the heart of agricultural policy, a recognition so far absent from the cabal of soviet-trained generals that surrounds the current president, Raul Castro (the current agriculture minister is also a general in the army).

Maintaining sustainable agriculture is key to Cuba’s environment and biodiversity

Peters 10 (Kathryn A. Peters, J.D. from the University of Oregon . "Creating a Sustainable Urban Agriculture Revolution". University of Oregon Law School. law.uoregon.edu/org/jell/docs/251/peters.pdf)
While urban agriculture was a response to a dramatic crisis in  Cuba’s history, through
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192 The development of urban farming has also ensured food security for Cuba.
193 The success of Cuba’s  system has established the country as a model for the
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a new economy for many Cubans without negatively  impacting the environment or society.

The impact of lifting the embargo is especially destructive—Cuba has uniquely rich biodiversity.

Peterson et al. 12 — Emily A. Peterson, Master of Public Policy Candidate at Duke University, Daniel J. Whittle, Senior Attorney and Cuba Program Director at the Environmental Defense Fund, former Adjunct Law Professor of Environmental Law at Wake Forest University Law School, holds a J.D. from the University of Colorado, and Douglas N. Rader, Chief Oceans Scientist for the Environmental Defense Fund, holds a Ph.D. in Biology from the University of North Carolina and an M.S. in Zoology from the University of Washington, 2012 ("Bridging the Gulf: Finding Common Ground on Environmental and Safety Preparedness for Offshore Oil and Gas in Cuba," Report by the Environmental Defense Fund, Available Online at http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/EDF-Bridging_the_Gulf-2012.pdf-http://www.edf.org/sites/default/files/EDF-Bridging_the_Gulf-2012.pdf, Accessed 05-08-2013, p. 2)
Situated at the convergence point of the Atlantic Ocean, Gulf of Mexico, and Caribbean Sea, Cuba is a biological crown jewel that boasts the largest marine biodiversity in the Caribbean. The country’s expanses of mangrove forests, wetlands, seagrass meadows, and coral reefs provide critical spawning areas, feeding grounds, and shelter for a wide array of marine animals, plants, and organisms.
Its location within the Caribbean makes Cuba a prime migratory corridor and wintering site,
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and represents one of the largest protected areas in the entire Caribbean region.

Each species lost increases the risk of human extinction — there is an invisible tipping point.

Diner 94 — David N. Diner, Major in the Judge Advocate General’s Corps of the United States Army, 1994 ("The Army And The Endangered Species Act: Who’s Endangering Whom?," Military Law Review (143 Mil. L. Rev. 161), Winter, Available Online via Lexis-Nexis)
4. Biological Diversity. – The main premise of species preservation is that diversity is better than simplicity. 77 As the current mass extinction has progressed, the world’s biological diversity generally has decreased. This trend occurs within ecosystems by reducing the number of species, and within species by reducing the number of individuals. Both trends carry serious future implications. 78
 ~*173~  Biologically diverse ecosystems are characterized by a large number of specialist
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of threads – which if cut anywhere breaks down as a whole." 79
By causing widespread extinctions, humans have artificially simplified many ecosystems. As biologic simplicity
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an aircraft’s wings, 80 mankind may be edging closer to the abyss.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 4 | Opponent: Seaholm GH | Judge: Anushka Panday

Cuba Healthcare DA

Cuban health care strong now – universal care and easy access.

Badore 13, Margaret Badore, writer for Mother Nature Network, 2013 ("What we can learn from Cuba’s health care system," Mother Nature Network, Available Online at http://www.mnn.com/health/fitness-well-being/stories/what-we-can-learn-from-cubas-health-care-system, Accessed 2-22-2014)
The correlation between low income and poor health has been established in many countries. Yet despite Cuba’s poverty, the country’s quality of health bucks this trend.
According to the United Nations Human Development Report, Cuba has the same life expectancy
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a few aspects of the Cuban health care system that Americans could adopt.
Community-oriented primary care
Universal care and good access to care are two factors that contribute to the success
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at the clinic in the morning and make house calls in the afternoons.
"Doctors in Cuba do a good job of making sure that patients are getting the care they need," said Dr. Lee T. Dresang, a family practitioner who teaches at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health. "They typically spend half of the day out in the community."
Dresang traveled to Cuba to learn about the health care system and is the lead author of the 2005 paper "Family Medicine in Cuba: Community-Oriented Primary Care and Complementary and Alternative Medicine," which was published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.
Since then, some providers in the U.S. have taken small steps toward this type of primary care, with the creation of primary care medical homes. These organizations aim to focus health care on successful outcomes — healthier people — rather than on volume.
The clinic where Dresang works has become a certified primary care medical home, which means the doctors, nurses and technicians have daily meetings and are working more closely together to coordinate each patient’s care.
"It’s been really nice for us to see the benefits it can have," said Dresang.
Acceptance of alternative and complementary medicine
Since the trade embargo was placed on Cuba, it has been difficult for doctors to access pharmaceuticals that are common elsewhere. This has encouraged the widespread use of complementary and alternative medicines, such as acupuncture, massage and heat therapy. Alternative medicine practices are integrated into the medical curriculum in Cuba.
"Most family physicians in Cuba practice some herbal medicine, also known as ’green medicine,’" Dresang writes. "A national formula and educational materials on green medicine are distributed to all practitioners by the Cuban Ministry of Public Health."
Homeopathy is also widely practiced in Cuba. One of the most interesting examples of its application is the widespread treatment of Weil’s disease, which often flares up during the rainy season because it is transmitted via water. A large-scale study found that Cubans’ risk for contracting the infection could be reduced with doses of the bacteria in a highly diluted solution.
In light of how many people seek complementary and alternative medicine from non-medical
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students may even seek training in these fields outside of the established curricula.
Of course, not every aspect of the Cuban health care system is worth adopting. The U.S. and Cuba have very different populations, and research into specific alternative medicine therapies is needed before they should be recommended more widely. Nonetheless, a country that made do with fewer technological and monetary resources for decades and still has such positive health outcomes is remarkable. Cuba’s example offers a wealth of potential new treatments and approaches to explore. 

Lifting the Embargo will devastate Cuban health care – causes brain drain.

Garrett 10 — Laurie Garrett, Pulitzer prize-winning science journalist and Senior Fellow on Council on Foreign Relations of the Global Health Program, 2010 ("Castrocare in Crisis: Will Lifting the Embargo on Cuba Make Things Worse?," The Cuban Economy, Available Online at http://thecubaneconomy.com/articles/2013/02/castrocare-in-crisis-will-lifting-the-embargo-on-cuba-make-things-worse/, Accessed 2-22-2014)
Cuba is a Third World country that aspires to First World medicine and health.
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chronic ailments related to aging, tobacco use, and excessive fat consumption.
By any measure, these achievements are laudable. But they have come at tremendous financial and social cost. The Cuban government’s 2008 budget of 2446.2 billion allotted 247.2 billion (about 16 percent) to direct health-care spending. Only Cuba’s expenditures for education exceeded those for health, and Cuba’s health costs are soaring as its aging population requires increasingly expensive chronic care.
Cuba’s economic situation has been dire since 1989, when the country lost its Soviet benefactors and its economy experienced a 35 percent contraction. Today, Cuba’s major industries — tourism, nickel mining, tobacco and rum production, and health care — are fragile. Cubans blame the long-standing U.S. trade embargo for some of these strains and are wildly optimistic about the transformations that will come once the embargo is lifted.
Overlooked in these dreamy discussions of lifestyle improvements, however, is that Cuba’s health
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its overall economy, it may be the better of two bad options.
Conclusion
In the long run, Cuba will need to develop a taxable economic base to generate government revenues — which would mean inviting foreign investment and generating serious employment opportunities. The onus is on the Castro government to demonstrate how the regime could adapt to the easing or lifting of the U.S. embargo. Certainly, Cuban leaders already know that their health triumphs would be at risk.
The United States, too, has tough responsibilities. How the U.S
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regulations and creating incentives that would bring a rational balance to the situation.
For clues about what might constitute a reasonable approach that could benefit all parties,
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, it has reduced abuses and compensated those countries whose personnel were poached.
Cuba’s five decades of public achievement in the health-care sector have resulted in
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the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba killed that vision. 

Strong Cuban health care key to disease prevention in poor nations.

Oxford Journal 6 — International Journal Epidemiology, part of Oxford Journal, 2006 ("Health in Cuba," Available Online at http://ije.oxfordjournals.org/content/35/4/817.full~~23ref-list-1, Accessed 2-23-2014)
The poorer countries of the world continue to struggle with an enormous health burden from
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take place on the potential lessons to be learned from the Cuban experience. 

Infections disease spread risks global extinction

Steinbruner 98 — John D. Steinbruner, Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution, "Biological weapons: A plague upon all houses," Foreign Policy)
It is a considerable comfort and undoubtedly a key to our survival that, so
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health, but a fundamental security problem for the species as a whole.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 4 | Opponent: Seaholm GH | Judge: Anushka Panday

Cuba Human Rights DA

~THE FIRST/NEXT OFF-CASE POSITION IS THE HUMAN RIGHTS DA~

First, unilateral concessions to Cuba worsen human rights abuses and decimate U.S. human rights leadership.

Suchlicki 13 — Jaime Suchlicki, Emilio Bacardi Moreau Distinguished Professor of History, Editor of the Cuban Affairs Journal, and Director of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies at the University of Miami, holds a Ph.D. from Texas Christian University, 2013 ("Why Sanctions on Cuba Must Remain," Room for Debate—a New York Times scholarly blog, November 20^th, Available Online at http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2013/11/19/sanctions-successes-and-failures/why-sanctions-on-cuba-must-remain-in-place, Accessed 11-21-2013)
What’s more, ending U.S. sanctions without major concessions from Cuba would send the wrong message to the Castro regime and to the rest of Latin America. Supporting regimes and dictators that violate human rights and abuse their population is an ill-adviced policy that rewards and encourages further abuses.
If the travel ban and the embargo are ended unilaterally now by the U.S., what negotiating tool to encourage change in Cuba will the U.S. government have with a future regime? Countries don’t change their policies without a quid pro quo from the other side. Unilateral concessions are pocketed by our adversaries without providing meaningful changes.
Sanctions should be ended as a result of negotiations between the U.S. and a Cuban government willing to provide meaningful and irreversible political and economic concessions, not only to the U.S. but, more important, to the Cuban people.

Second, human rights leadership is vital to global protection of human rights.

Griffey 11 — Brian Griffey, human rights consultant who has worked for the United Nations, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International USA and as an investigative journalist, 2011 ("U.S. leadership on human rights essential to strengthen democracy abroad," The Hill, March 18^th, Available Online at http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/150667-us-leadership-on-human-rights-essential-to-strengthen-democracy-abroad~~23ixzz2sB8JqAUc, Accessed 02-02-2014)
Nonetheless, U.S. leadership on human rights offers clear opportunities to advance not only international peace and security – a fundamental purpose of the U.N. – but also conjoined US political and economic interests at home and abroad.
The U.S. is presently demonstrating exactly how crucial such involvement is as an elected member of the Human Rights Council, participating in vital negotiations on how best to mitigate widespread abuses responding to ongoing unrest in the Middle East and North Africa, including by strategic US allies in global security and trade.
As Secretary Clinton expressed en route to Geneva to participate in recent talks on human rights violations in Libya, joining the Council has "proven to be a good decision, because we’ve been able to influence a number of actions that we otherwise would have been on the outside looking in."
In its first submission to the body, the U.S. likewise recognized that participation in the Council’s peer-review system allows the U.S. not only to lead by example and "encourage others to strengthen their commitments to human rights," but also to address domestic human rights shortcomings.
By leading international discourse on human rights, the U.S. will be in a better position both to advance observation of human rights abroad, and to take on new treaty commitments that demonstrate adherence of our own system to the vaulting principles we identify with our

Tournament: UGA | Round: 5 | Opponent: Alpharetta RS | Judge: Scott Brown

1NC – Latin America K

Vote negative to reject the affirmative’s deployment of the term and concept of "Latin America."

First, there is no such thing as "Latin America." Usage of the term and concept by scholars is insulting and results in misrecognition.

Júnior 10 — João Feres Júnior, Professor of Political Science at the Institute of
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Social Sciences Graduate Programs, ISBN 9781607418689, p. 7-8)
This work bears the qualifier "critical" because it does not aim at providing a simple description of Latin America’s conceptual history. On the contrary, it has a clear normative thrust that consists of demonstrating that the concept of Latin America has historically been a conduit of misrecognition. Or better yet, if one accepts that language usage is a form of action, the concept of Latin America is a form of misrecognition. But what is misrecognition?
A more in-depth account of the philosophical and ethical problem of misrecognition will
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by the ones who define themselves as not pertaining to it: Americans.
Inappropriate generalization is not the only form of misrecognition that is perpetrated through the concept
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their lives and conceive of themselves is a form of insult in itself.

Second, "Latin America" as a term and concept is fundamentally racist.

Júnior 10 — João Feres Júnior, Professor of Political Science at the Institute of
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Social Sciences Graduate Programs, ISBN 9781607418689, p. vii-ix)
Terms used to identify peoples, cultures, and regions have lately come under scrutiny
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lowering their social status, political leverage, and access to public goods.
Other "ethnic" denominations have not become the object of intense critical scrutiny,
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implications of using "Latin America" and its symmetrical matches are compared.
What term for naming Americans would be the exact symmetrical correlative of "Latin America
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most obvious candidate is "Anglo-Saxon." ~end page vii~
Although "Angle" and "Saxon" separately name the Germanic-speaking tribes that invaded the British Isles in the fifth century, the hyphenated form "Anglo-Saxon" is usually employed to refer to English itself. Since English is the language of the European power that colonized the United States, the symmetric form for Anglo-Saxon America would be Portuguese America and Spanish America, but not Latin America. In sum, according to this interpretation, Anglo-Saxon is not perfectly symmetrical to Latin.
The noun "Latin" refers to the language originally spoken in a country of
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. The symmetrical match for Latin America is Germanic America or Teutonic America.
Let us now examine the political and historical meanings associated with these terms in the
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correlative of Latin America, Germanic America, is no longer in use.
The term Anglo-Saxon begs for an alternative interpretation, given that it is
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viii~ associated with the continuation of exclusionary and segregationist attitudes towards minorities.
If Anglo-Saxon America can be said to be a symmetric correlative of Latin
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the Other part of the continent are indelibly marked by the Latin character.
The symmetrical correlatives of Latin America found in this experiment were discredited because the political
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and thus, as an Other, both in cultural and racial terms.
This experiment has revealed that the act of naming Latin America rests on a fundamental asymmetry between a perception of an American Self and of a Latin American Other. My goal in this book is to uncover the meanings and political projects that hide behind this asymmetrical operation.

Third, reject racism in every instance — even if unintentional.

Memmi 2k — Albert Memmi, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at the University of Paris, 1999 (Racism, Published by the University of Minnesota Press, ISBN 0816631654, p. 163-165)
The struggle against racism will be long, difficult, without intermission, without remission, probably never achieved.
Yet, for this very reason, it is a struggle to be undertaken without
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In that sense, we cannot fail to rise to the racist challenge.
However, it remains true that one’s moral conduct only emerges from a choice;
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end page 164~ banishing injustice, because injustice engenders violence and death.
Of course, this is debatable.  There are those who think that if one
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.  True, it is a wager, but the stakes are irresistible.

Finally, language choices are a voting issue—this is an a priori issue.

Chernus 6 — Ira Chernus, Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Program at the University of Colorado-Boulder, 2006 (Monsters to Destroy: The Neoconservative War on Terror and Sin, Published by Paradigm Publishers, ISBN 1594512752, p. 7-8)
But their ideals and values do make sense within their own ideological stories. And
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. That’s why the words and the ideology they express must be studied.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 5 | Opponent: Alpharetta RS | Judge: Scott Brown

1NC – Multilateralism Counterplan

Text - The United States Federal Government should ratify and affirm to the Kyoto Protocol.

The counterplan signals US commitment to multilateralism and doesn’t link to any of the DAs.

The counterplan solves their multilateralism advantage but avoids disadvantages to the plan. The U.S.’s refusal to ratify Kyoto has caused a global stalemate — it’s the key barrier to effective multilateralism.

Hoffmann 11 — Matthew J. Hoffmann, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto, holds a Ph.D. in International Relations from George Washington University, 2011 ("Making Sense of Experimentation," Climate Governance at the Crossroads: Experimenting with a Global Response after Kyoto, Published by Oxford University Press, ISBN 9780195390087, p. 69-70)
Stalemate
The Kyoto Protocol process moved steadily toward stalemate in the late 1990s, exacerbated by
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a significant rethinking of the use of megamultilateral processes for addressing climate change.
This stalemate provided a third, and perhaps the most significant, source of uncertainty
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model as the accepted procedure for pursuing the global response to climate change.
A major aspect of increasing uncertainty through stalemate was obviously the U.S.
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many actors that the megamultilateral process was broken or at least that momentum would

Tournament: UGA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart TS | Judge: Andrew Hart

1NC — Shunning DA

First, Mexico is a flagrant, willful, and persistent violator of human rights — abuses are widespread.

Pachico 13 — Elyssa Pachico, Analyst at InSight Crime—a think tank about organized crime in the Americas, 2013 ("Amnesty International Critiques Human Rights Abuses of Mexico Drug War," InSight Crime, May 23^rd, Available Online at
In its annual report, Amnesty International criticized Mexico for human rights abuses committed during President Calderon’s militarized response to organized crime, a war which left more than 60,000 people dead and some 150,000 displaced.
The report noted that while organized criminal groups are responsible for the majority of killings seen during Calderon’s six-year term, they often acted in collusion with public officials.
An ongoing problem is abuses committed by the security forces, especially when carrying out anti-crime operations, the report stated. While Mexico’s National Humans Rights Commission registered 1,921 complaints against the military and 802 complaints against the Federal Police, only eight members of the military were convicted in military courts in 2012. There is no available information on the number of police prosecuted and/or convicted for human rights crimes, the report added.
Arbitrary detention under the so-called "arraigo" law — which allows authorities to holds suspects for up to 80 days without charge — is routinely used by prosecutors at both the state and federal level, and represents a serious abuse of human rights, the report said. Torture is also regularly used to obtain confessions from suspects, with the National Human Rights Commission registering 1,662 complaints last year alone.
The report also criticized Mexico for the security forces’ excessive use of force and extra-judicial killings in confrontations with criminal groups and for collusion between public officials and criminals in abusing migrants.
InSight Crime Analysis
Amnesty International’s assessment makes a strong case that Mexico is sorely lacking in its commitment to human rights. It also stated that the US could arguably have done more to push Mexico in the right direction. As noted by Amnesty, in 2011 the US State Department released some 2436 million in specific aid to Mexico, even though Mexico was not meant to receive these funds without meeting several human rights criteria.
Amnesty International is not the only international human rights watchdog to level critiques against Mexico’s flawed justice system. Earlier this year, Human Rights Watch openly called for the arraigo law to be abolished, a move which, as InSight Crime has argued, would make sense both in terms of protecting human rights and fighting organized crime more effectively. 

Second, reject engagement with human rights abusers — moral duty to shun.

Beversluis 89 — Eric H. Beversluis, Professor of Philosophy and Economics at Aquinas College, holds an A.B. in Philosophy and German from Calvin College, an M.A. in Philosophy from Northwestern University, an M.A. in Economics from Ohio State University, and a Ph.D. in the Philosophy of Education from Northwestern University, 1989 ("On Shunning Undesirable Regimes: Ethics and Economic Sanctions," Public Affairs Quarterly, Volume 3, Number 2, April, Available Online to Subscribing Institutions via JSTOR, p. 17-19)
A fundamental task of morality is resolving conflicting interests. If we both want the
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rage. Thus ethics identifies the rights of individuals when their interests conflict.
But how can a case for shunning be made on this view of morality?
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, on what grounds might it be a duty to impose such sanctions?
We find the answer when we note that there is another "level" of
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rights of others with one’s actions but also to support that moral order.
Consider that the moral order itself contributes significantly to people’s rights being respected. It
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it indirectly affects people’s rights. And this is where shunning fits in.
Certain types of behavior constitute a direct attack on the moral order. When the
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three conditions which turn immoral behavior into an attack on the moral order.
An immoral action is flagrant if it is "extremely or deliberately conspicuous; notorious
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reaffirms the legitimacy of that moral order. How does shunning do this?
First, by refusing publicly to have to do with such a person one announces support for the moral order and backs up the announcement with action. This action reinforces the commitment to the moral order both of the shunner and of the other members of the community. (Secretary of State Shultz in effect made this argument in his call for international sanctions on Libya in the early days of 1986.)
Further, shunning may have a moral effect on the shunned person, even if the direct impact is not adequate to change the immoral behavior. If the shunned person thinks of herself as part of the moral community, shunning may well make clear to her that she is, in fact, removing herself from that community by the behavior in question. Thus shunning may achieve by moral suasion what cannot be achieved by "force."
Finally, shunning may be a form of punishment, of moral sanction, whose appropriateness depends not on whether it will change the person’s behavior, but on whether he deserves the punishment for violating the moral order. Punishment then can be viewed as a way of maintaining the moral order, of "purifying the community" after it has been made "unclean," as ancient communities might have put it.
Yet not every immoral action requires that we shun. As noted above, we
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on the moral order itself through flagrant, willful, and persistent wrongdoing.
We can also now see why failure to shun can under certain circumstances suggest complicity. But it is not that we have a duty to shun because failure to do so suggests complicity. Rather, because we have an obligation to shun in certain circumstances, when we fail to do so others may interpret our failure as tacit complicity in the willful, persistent, and flagrant immorality.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 4 | Opponent: Seaholm GH | Judge: Anushka Panday

First, Cuba is a flagrant, willful, and persistent violator of human rights — repression is worsening.

Miami Herald 13 — Miami Herald, 2013 ("Human rights under abuse in Cuba," Editorial, April 22^nd, Available Online at http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/04/22/3358813/human-rights-under-abuse-in-cuba.html~~23storylink=cpy, Accessed 07-03-2013)
The State Department’s latest report on human-rights practices effectively puts the lie to the idea that the piecemeal and illusory changes in Cuba under Gen. Raúl Castro represent a genuine political opening toward greater freedom.
If anything, things are getting worse. The report, which covers 2012, says the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights and Reconciliation counted 6,602 short-term detentions during the year, compared with 4,123 in 2011. In March 2012, the same commission recorded a 30-year record high of 1,158 short-term detentions in a single month just before the visit of Pope Benedict XVI.
Among the many abuses cited by the 2012 report are the prison sentences handed out to members of the Unión Patriotica de Cuba, the estimated 3,000 citizens held under the charge of "potential dangerousness," state-orchestrated assaults against the Damas de Blanco (Ladies in White), the suspicious death of dissident Oswaldo Payá and so on.
As in any dictatorship, telling the truth is a crime: Independent journalist Calixto Ramón Martínez Arias, the first to report on the cholera outbreak in Cuba, was jailed in September for the crime of desacato (insulting speech) and remained there until last week.
The regime is willing to undertake some meek economic reforms to keep people employed. It has even dared to relax its travel requirements to allow more Cubans to leave the country if they can get a passport.
Both of these are short-term survival measures, designed as escape valves for growing internal pressure. But when it comes to free speech, political activity and freedom of association — the building blocks of a free society — the report is a depressing chronicle of human-rights abuses and a valuable reminder that repression is the Castro regime’s only response to those who demand a genuinely free Cuba. Fundamental reform? Not a chance.

Tournament: UGA | Round: 1 | Opponent: Carrollton School of the Sacred Heart TS | Judge: Andrew Hart

1NC — Warming Counterplan

The United States federal government should implement a Greenhouse Gas Fee, establish a National Green Bank, increase investments in public transportation, repeal exemptions that support hydraulic fracturing from the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and other environmental regulations, and eliminate fossil fuel subsidies. We’ll clarify.

The counterplan is the most effective way to solve warming.

Shank and Lichtash 13 — Michael Shank, Director of Foreign Policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, Adjunct Faculty at George Mason University’s School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution, holds a Ph.D. in Conflict Analysis and Resolution from George Mason University, and Matt Lichtash, Policy Analyst and Co-Founder of the Wesleyan Climate Project, 2013 ("Five Steps America Must Take Now to Combat Climate Change," U.S. News 26 World Report, October 15^th, Available Online at http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/10/15/five-steps-america-must-take-now-to-combat-global-warming, Accessed 02-07-2014)
The government shutdown, even after it ends, will slow much of the president’s
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spurring global climate action — is also getting stuck coming out the gate.
To its credit, the Obama administration, cognizant of congressional gridlock, designed its strategy around executive action, using powers already granted under laws such as the Clean Air Act. What we know, however, according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, is that the U.S. must cut emissions more than twice as much as the president’s plan, in a best-case-scenario, in order to stave off the worst impacts of climate change.
It is clear that the U.S. must propose a bolder plan to position the world to hold a temperature increase below 2 degrees Celsius, the widely agreed "safe-zone" that prevents climate catastrophe. The only way to lower greenhouse gas pollution in the near term and ensure deep cuts in the long term is through market-based solutions, which require Congressional approval.
President Obama realizes this. When he introduced his climate plan, he admitted that "we’ve got more to do," and declared that he is "willing to work with anyone to make a ~bipartisan, market-based solution to climate change~ happen," saying that climate change is a "challenge that does not pause for partisan gridlock."
We could not agree more. For this reason, we are recommending the top five market-based solutions that Congress can implement to align our climate policy with what the world’s best scientists say is necessary.
First, we must implement a Greenhouse Gas Fee that puts a price on climate
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land-use practices and protect vulnerable communities from climate and price changes.
Depending on the design of the fee, implementing this policy tool could reduce overall U.S. greenhouse gas emissions from 2005 levels by 18 to 32 percent in 2020 and 50 to 95 percent in 2050, according to a new report, "The Plan: How the U.S. Can Help Stabilize the Climate and Create A Clean Energy Future."
Second, we need to establish an independent, government-backed National Green Bank
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the state level. We must now do it at the federal level.
Third, we should increase investments in public transportation by 241.5 billion
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transportation related emissions could be reduced by 26 to 30 percent in 2050.
Fourth, we must repeal the exemptions from the Clean Air Act, the Clean
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powerful greenhouse gas methane — must ultimately be accounted for by the industry.
Finally, let’s scrap fossil fuel subsidies. While not all of these subsidies are unnecessary (indeed, many low-income Americans rely on the Home Energy Assistance Program to help pay for heating bills), the most wasteful ones should be eliminated. This will have no impact on gas prices and will raise 2440 billion of revenue over the next 10 years.
More importantly, reducing our fossil fuel subsidies here at home will send an important international signal for other nations to follow our lead. While U.S. emissions won’t decline substantially with fossil fuel subsidy elimination, there exists large reduction potential around the world should governments join with us and engage in responsible subsidy reform. We must lead the way.

Tournament: UGA Pre-Round | Round: 1 | Opponent: All Opponents | Judge:
Look at Burgess-Patel for 1NC cites